Church School Attracts Burglars

After 3 Recent Break-ins, Officials Wonder How To Replace Equipment

FORT LAUDERDALE - — Apparently it wasn't enough that burglars got into a struggling church school on Nov. 15 to steal computers and videocassette recorders.

They came back two more times, on Nov. 29 and Dec. 3, stealing a shopping list of school goods that ranged from microscopes and televisions to Kleenex and Baby Wipes. Even a second-grader's desk was hauled away - pencils, crayons, chewed gum and all. "That's what kills us - because we have so few things anyway," said Kathy Grisinger, first-grade teacher at Faith Lutheran School, a tiny private church school in a working-class neighborhood just off Davie Boulevard and Southwest 30th Avenue.

"We took years to accumulate that stuff," Grisinger said.

Parents have been begging TV repair shops for used VCRs. The school bookkeeper must recreate every school file that went out the window with the office computer. And the assistant principal paid for a security alarm system with his personal credit card in hopes the school won't be broken into again. No one is sure when he will be repaid.

Although the 250-student school had insurance, it won't pay replacement value on equipment that was old to begin with. It wasn't until the third burglary that school officials even called their insurance company, because they didn't want their premiums to increase, Grisinger said.

The burglaries came on top of two other break-ins last spring at the school, which uses a 1950s-era building and whose principal and assistant principal also teach full time.

In the last break-in, on Dec. 3, burglars used a crowbar to remove an entire door frame and bypass the double lock into the school computer room. Windows were smashed everywhere. Earlier this year, burglars punched holes into the first-grade classroom wall and ceiling trying to get into the school office, Grisinger said.

And school officials are still wondering what the burglars will do with National Geographic videos, a world globe and 20 science dissection kits.

Some of the stolen goods had been purchased by teachers.

Most parents struggle just to pay the $2,300-a-year school tuition, Grisinger said, so they cannot help. Nor can Faith Lutheran Church, which is financially unable to support the school, officials said.

"The people sending their children here are making sacrifices in other areas," Grisinger said. "The people who go here are really struggling."